* * * * *
Yet every now and then the same thought came; it lay like a small
but threatening black shadow across all those brilliant hopes and
dreams which were filling his brain. So far he had played the game
of life as a hard man, perhaps, and a selfish one, but always
honestly. Now, for the first time, he had stepped aside from the
beaten track. He told himself that he was not bound to believe Da
Souza's story, that he had left Monty with the honest conviction
that he was past all human help. Yet he knew that such consolation
was the merest sophistry. Through the twilight, as he passed to
and fro, he fancied more than once that the wan face of an old man,
with wistful, sorrowing eyes, was floating somewhere before him
- and he stopped to listen with bated breath to the wind rustling
in the elm-trees, fancying he could bear that same passionate cry
ringing still in his ears - the cry of an old man parted from his
kin and waiting for death in a lonely land.
CHAPTER XIX
Ernestine found a letter on her plate a few mornings afterwards
which rather puzzled her. It was from a firm of solicitors in
Lincoln's Inn - the Eastchester family solicitors - requesting her
to call that morning to see them on important business.
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